SOURCE: "Authorial Voice in the Kasrilevke Stories," in Author as Character in the Works of Sholom Aleichem, The Edwin Mellen Press, 1985, pp. 73-99.

[In the following excerpt, Aarons examines the defining characteristics of Aleichem' s shtetl stories.]

At the heart of Sholom Aleichem's short stories, monologues and feuilletons lies Kasrilevke, the fictionalized shtetl, representative of the small villages at the outskirts of the cities where Jews were forced to live. In one of the Kasrilevke stories, "The Town of the Little People," Sholom Aleichem explains the origin of the name, Kasrilevke:

The town of the little people into which I shall now take you, dear reader, is exactly in the middle of that blessed Pale into which Jews have been packed as closely as herring in a barrel and told to increase and multiply. The name of the town is Kasrilevka. How did this name originate? I'll tell you:

Among us Jews poverty has many faces and many aspects. A poor man is an unlucky man, he is a pauper, a beggar, a schnorrer, a starveling, a tramp, or a plain failure. A different tone is used in speaking of each one, but all these names express human wretchedness. However, there is still another name—kasril, or kasrilik. That name is spoken in a different tone altogether, almost a bragging tone. For instance, "Oh, am I ever a kasrilik!" A kasrilik is not just an ordinary pauper, a failure in life. On the contrary, he is a man who has not allowed poverty to degrade him. He laughs at it. He is poor, but cheerful.¹

These two elements, poverty and the unfaltering attitudes of the Kasrilevkites, characterize Sholom Aleichem's stories of the shtetl prior to its destruction. These shtetl Jews were self-sufficient and isolated from the rest of the world, a condition which allowed them to maintain their religious customs and values.

Although Menakhem-Mendl is distanced physically from the shtetl, for the most part the characters in both the monologues and in The Adventures of Menakhem-Mendl share these characteristics. Isolated and unnoticed by the rest of the world, the shtetl Jews, as Sholom Aleichem depicts them, were immune to change and relatively untouched by events in the outside world. Menakhem-Mendl, for instance, the writer of the letter collection considered in the previous chapter, becomes almost a figure of myth because he is impervious to events. His foredoomed attempts to find a place in the economic world outside the shtetl become heroic, paradoxically, by his failure to be daunted by a situation he does not understand. When, for instance, Mendl fails to prosper in the refinery business he writes to his wife, Sheyne-Sheyndl:

. . . The business has bit the dust. Manufacturers are pining away for a penny, capitalists are holding back, and brokers are out of a job, with not a thing to do, and me in the middle.

You probably think it's the end of the world? Oh, no, you are not to worry, my dearest wife. God is eternal, . . . People like me don't go under, heaven forbid. On the contrary, only now do I feel confident that, God willing, I am bound to rise in the world because I am now working on a deal which must bring, as my share, almost one hundred thousand rubles!²

Menakhem-Mendl, like the majority of Sholom Aleichem's Kasrilevke characters, is endowed with an unwavering optimistic good-nature. He accepts disaster because he is accustomed to it, and does not let it affect his spirits. Instead of succumbing to the multitude of disasters he encounters on his travels outside of the safe confínes of the shtetl, he always survives, essentially undaunted by each near escape, either from absolute poverty or from the hands of the authorities.

Sholom Aleichem never seems entirely comfortable with this kind of character in his early works, but by and large his stance is one of sympathetic distance, as we have seen in the previous chapters. This position of detached amusement is an acceptable attitude for Sholom Aleichem's audience of Europeanized Jews. Menakhem-Mendl, for example, is doomed to failure because of external circumstances barring his way, but primarily because of his own internal limitations, which are presented to us in a comic, sympathetic and non-threatening manner. Because these characters are essentially isolated from the rest of the world, and unnoticed in Mendl's case, even when they find their way out of the shtetl confínes, they pose no real problem for the Europeanized intellectual audience that Sholom Aleichem so clearly intended to reach.

However, when the shtetls begin to open themselves up to the outside world the nature of the Jewish problem widens. The rhetorical problem for the author in the monologues and letters was one of advancing a comfortable attitude toward one's heritage. A similar attitude carries over to the stories of the pre-Enlightenment Kasrilevke and the host of characters that react comically to all kinds of situations. While these characters complicate matters and fare precariously through life, the author and reader observe them from an amused and sympathetic distance.

Sholom Aleichem wrote during a time of great upheaval in the shtetls. The Enlightenment, and perhaps even more, the twentieth century in Europe in general, brought about the gradual loosening and finally the disintegration of the old world villages. A large number of the Kasrilevke stories are devoted to this change in the life and customs of the shtetls. I devote this [essay] to these Kasrilevke stories that mark the changes in shtetl life because they demonstrate a drastic shift in authorial voice and stance from that in the earlier stories, monologues and letters.

The writer seems to have changed his mind in these stories. He no longer looks back at the shtetl and the shtetl Jew with nostalgia. In fact, when Sholom Aleichem enlarges his canvas by discussing Kasrilevke in light of its changes and in relation to Eastern Europe at large, we discover him searching for an appropriate stance all over again, as he begins to reflect upon the new dramatic situation.

Sholom Aleichem was also perhaps forced, in a sense, to make the transition in his stories to include the historical changes taking place in the shtetls in particular and in Eastern Europe at large. When he made the decision to write fiction in Yiddish instead of in Hebrew and to legitimize the language as an effective literary medium he ran up against the bias that Yiddish was only useful in its ability to express old world values and superstitions, and therefore was an illegitimate literary medium. It was perhaps necessary for Sholom Aleichem, if he were to successfully prove the potential for Yiddish as transcending its prescribed biases, to place his works within the current literary trends and topics of other Russian—not necessarily Jewish—writers. In other words, Sholom Aleichem may have felt that he would defeat his purpose, and the purpose for Yiddish, if Yiddish was only appropriate in the expression of old world shtetl stories. The author, on the contrary, perhaps felt compelled to incorporate the historical changes as they took place, because although not chronicles, his stories were always characterized by those elements of realism that make them so vivid. In fact, to successfully break from the prescribed satiric and comic narrative methods imposed upon Yiddish fiction writers by the maskilim, discussed in my opening chapter, Sholom Aleichem had to broaden not only his literary techniques but his subject matter as well. Otherwise, Yiddish literature faced the possibility of dying out with that culture.

The stance embraced in these past works is no longer acceptable when the shtetl, as Sholom Aleichem once knew it, disintegrates, because, although the situation changes, the characters do not. The shtetl folk in these stories share the same characteristics as do the shtetl Jews in the previous monologues, stories and letters. They continue to be restricted by their limited emotional and intellectual faculties while optimistically struggling through life. The problem for the writer rests on this precise point. That is, while the rigid old world shtetl breaks down and opens itself up to outside culture and education, the shtetl inhabitants do not. They, in effect, remain the same. Therefore, when we regard the shtetl Jews within the enlarged canvas of European tradition, they appear in a very different light. Instead of adjusting to the changes imposed upon them, the shtetl Jews are hopelessly unable to cope with the sophisticated world and their very characters become an impediment to change.

For example, the shtetl where we found Sheyne-Sheyndl, Menakhem-Mendl's wife, was a place isolated from the outside world and suspended in time. The only incidents of importance were those events that affected them directly within their own homes or towns, where everyone knew everyone else, and made it a point to be involved in the business of his neighbor. The majority of Jews who inhabited the shtetls did not speak the language of their host country, but rather communicated almost solely in Yiddish, the mame-loshn. They were, thus, for the most part, unaware of the events happening outside of their immediate surroundings. They instead were governed by ritual activities, religious customs and superstitions which the maskilim (the Jewish intellectuals of the Enlightenment) felt were responsible for their continued isolationism.³ As members of the shtetls were forced by poverty or restlessness to leave the confines of the shtetls, more and more of the outside world inevitably entered into their lives. However, when confronted with news of the rest of the world the shtetl Jews respond to it in the only way they know how. In the story, "Dreyfus in Kasrilevke," Sholom Aleichem comically describes the manner in which events from the big cities were brought inside the shtetl communities and the peculiarly insular way the shtetl folk understood the news.

I doubt if the Dreyfus case made such a stir anywhere as it did in Kasrilevka . . .

How did Kasrilevka get wind of the Dreyfus case? Well, how did it find out about the war between the English and the Boers, or what went on in China? What do they have to do with China? Tea they got from Wisotzky in Moscow. . . .

So how did Kasrilevka learn about the Dreyfus case? From Zeidel.

Zeidel, Reb Shaye's son, was the only person in town who subscribed to a newspaper, and all the news of the world they learned from him, or rather through him. He read and they interpreted. He spoke and they supplied the commentary. He told what he read in the paper, but they turned it around to suit themselves, because they understood better than he did.⁴

The authorial tone in the above passage is unmistakably sarcastic, and marks a distinctive change in authorial voice and judgment.

Sholom Aleichem may in fact be responding to the maskilic argument that the shtetl Jews should shed their medieval and superstitious customs and attitudes in order to become assimilated into European life. It is perhaps the case that Sholom Aleichem, in these stories that mark the transitional stages of the shtetl, indicates his attitude against the contemporary Jewish critics who demanded an end to isolationism, and exposed the small-town Jew to the world at large. What Sholom Aleichem seems to find is that exposure doesn't necessarily mean assimilation; it can, rather, reveal the common Jew's inadequacies before the world.

The entire rhetorical situation thus changes in these Kasrilevke stories that mark the transitional stages of shtetl life, and the critic must ask a new set of questions of the writer and of the stories themselves. What happens to the shtetl Jew when forced to become a part of European culture? What attitude must the reader, in this instance, adopt toward a people and a culture no longer mythical or suspended in time, but in the midst of a larger controlling culture? Finally, what questions must the critic ask of the writer in terms of the changes he is forced to make in his attempts to come to terms with an entirely different, and essentially more problematic situation? It is one thing to come to terms with an isolated culture, existing in the past. It is quite another issue to regard those same people in relation to the rest of the world as it approaches the twentieth century.

A Singular Authorial Voice

When the traditional standards of the shtetl break down, the ironic distance between the implied author and the persona that characterized Sholom Aleichem's past works, no longer functions as a major narrative technique. In both the monologues and The Adventures of Menakhem-Mendl the writer created a narrator who, because of his limitations and short-sighted vision of the world, was unreliable. His values and attitudes therefore differed, in varying degrees, from those of the author and the reader. Through the establishment of two voices, the persona's and the implied author's, the judgments of the author are developed, and he is set apart from the material by his ironic posture. The biographical author further distanced himself from his subject by creating the authorial figure of Sholom Aleichem who claimed responsibility for gaining access to the stories and letters.

In a large number of the Kasrilevke stories, unlike the previous works, we hear one narrating voice and experience little, if any, distinction between the figure of Sholom Aleichem and the writer, Sholem Rabinovitsh. In the story, "The Great Panic of the Little People," for example, the fictionalized Sholom Aleichem merges with the author as narrator and writer.

Heaven has apparently decreed that Kasrilevke's Jews are destined to have more woes than anyone else in the world. Wheresoever there was calamity, misfortune, troubles and misery, trials and tribulations, they sought to sympathize, taking each affliction to heart more than anyone the world over. . . . by what stretch of the imagination could you reasonably account for the Kasrilevkites' involvement with the Boers, whom the English conquered and wiped out? In Kasrilevke that war, too, caused a hullabaloo. I mean pain, heartache, and humiliation. . . .

Moreover, please tell me, my dear Kasrilevkites, why you have to break your heads over Serbia, where in the middle of one fine night some officers killed the Czar and his wife and chucked them out the window? Why should all these things worry you more than anyone else? Don't you have anything else to worry about? Have you already married off and provided for all your children? What sort of habit is it, I ask you, to stick your nose into every pot? Believe me, the world will get along very nicely without you, and everyone will undoubtedly manage to take care of himself.

The author begs his reader's pardon for addressing such cutting remarks to his fellow Kasrilevkites. But please understand, dear friends, that 1 myself am a Kasrilevkite. Born and bred in Kasrilevke, I was educated in its Talmud Torahs and schools and was even married there. But then I set my little ship adrift in the great and tempestuous sea of life whose waves are high as houses. And despite the fact that one is perpetually in a tumult and on the go, 1 have never ever forgotten either my beloved home town Kasrilevke, may it thrive and prosper to ripe old age, or my dear brethren, the Kasrilevkite Jews, may they be fruitful and multiply. When we experience violence, disaster or calamity here, far away from Kasrilevke, 1 immediately ask myself: What's happening there, in my home town?⁵

The entire manner of narration in the above passage is significantly distinct from the rambling, illogical catalogue of complaints that characterized the narrators in the monologues and the letters. The narrator in the monologue, "A Predestined Disaster," for example, connected his tale not with a logical progression of ideas, but with a series of disasters connected by the statement, "to make a long story short,. . . ."⁶ But he never managed to state anything briefly; his endless circling was terminated only by exhaustion. Although the voice of the author is silent throughout the monologue, his judgments, which are also those of Sholom Aleichem, the fictionalized recipient of the tales, are made clear to us by his development of the persona.

In the Kasrilevke stories . . . however, there is little distinction between the speaker and the author. The narrator is generally not a persona, and we must assume that his voice is the same as the author's. This narrator, as the above citation demonstrates, is learned and eloquent (e.g., his use of metaphors). Even the diction in the above example is elevated in a fashion impossible earlier. The humor is a conscious stance on the part of the narrator, Sholom Aleichem, as contrasted to the inadvertent humor of the narrators in the earlier works.

And this technique of creating a pseudonym which becomes both narrator and dramatized character in his own right perhaps marks Sholom Aleichem's greatest achievement. Sholom Aleichem, fictionalized character-narrator, allows the writer an enormous amount of literary freedom. As Dan Miron so aptly demonstrates in A Traveler Disguised and in Sholem Aleykhem: Person, Persona, Presence, the figure of Sholom Aleichem functions as both insider and outsider. He is at once a member of the shtetl community, privy to the confidences of the other Jews as well as maintaining a posture of distanced observer of those experiences related to him. The writer, Sholom Aleichem, by assuming the name of his main narrator-character calls attention to his complex relationship to his own material. He can be a critical observer of that which is closest to him, his people and his heritage.

In many of these Kasrilevke stories Sholom Aleichem appears as not merely a silent recipient of the tales but as an active participant in the stories themselves. This role results in a dramatic shift in the tone of the narrative. In the Kasrilevke stories that mark the end of the pre-Enlightenment shtetl life, we are not distanced from the speaker by his intellectual limitations, but rather, we are able to identify with his speech, diction and word choice. The Kasrilevke Jews are not viewed with the sympathetic detachment of the letters and the monologues; they are still undaunted, but their attempt to understand the non-shtetl world is viewed with a kind of objectivity which slides, over and over, into criticism. Sholom Aleichem even apologizes to the reader for his critical remarks on the grounds that he is "a Kasrilevkite" himself. Yet the establishment of his identity with the shtetl folk in no way serves to temper the overt criticism his words confer. Although he has put a physical distance between himself and the shtetl, it is clear by his tone that he has not found a comfortable perspective from which he can view his heritage. He is haunted by the shtetl and criticises the Kasrilevkites for their naive involvement and excessive reactions to incidents that do not even remotely affect them, resulting in a masked self-criticism.

The critical voice of the author in this respect is perhaps a response to those of his contemporaries who advocated the shtetl Jew's involvement with the outside world. Not only does their child-like provincialism and limited world view prevent them from understanding and appropriately reacting to world-wide events, but Sholom Aleichem clearly satirizes the events themselves. His comparison of the Boer War and the assassination of the Czar and his family in Serbia to the problem of marrying off one's children in the small shtetls undermines the enormity of those events in the national news, and implies the essential question of the reasons for their involvement in world-wide affairs. Why should the shtetl Jew become educated to a world that offers merely more trouble and inadequacies? Although the narrator has escaped the problems and restrictions of the shtetl, he finds himself in the midst of far greater disasters. Sholom Aleichem may also be making distant events human, as seen through the eyes of those who are too "naive" to regard war and politics as mere abstractions.

In the letters and the monologues, Sholom Aleichem clearly thought that he could define a stance toward the shtetls of Europe, a satisfactory stance, that did not involve much of an actual relationship. But when he comes face to face with the Kasrilevkites' confrontation with the contemporary culture, his involvement is very apparent. The following paragraph is an attack:

For your information, no matter how small, forlorn, and castaway Kasrilevke may be, it is connected to the rest of the world by a sort of wire which if tapped at one end delivers a message at the other. Let me put it another way. Kasrilevke can be compared to a unborn child, tied to its mother's umbilical cord, that feels everything the mother feels. The mother's pain is the child's pain and vice versa. The only thing that puzzles me is why Kasrilevke feels the troubles and woes of the entire world while absolutely no one cares about Kasrilevke, or sympathizes with its afflictions. Kasrilevke is a kind of step-child of the world. The first to react to a misfortune, Kasrilevke scurries about more than anyone else and goes without sleep till it practically knocks at death's door.

Yet—oh blast those anti-Semites!—should this stepchild fall ill and collapse in a corner, burning feverishly like an oven, wasting away for lack of food, and thirsting for lack of water, you may be sure that not a soul would even cast a glance in its direction.⁷

The controlling tone of the narrative becomes primarily argumentative, because the author is not separated aesthetically or emotionally from the situation he describes by another narrating figure. The tone is pathetic and the irony suggests a tragic mask of human concern, anger and a provincial compassion that tries to compass the world. As I have indicated, Sholom Aleichem the character-narrator did not manifest norms and judgments significantly different from those of the author in the previously discussed works. However, Sholom Aleichem was never a mere nominal replacement for the author. Rather Sholom Aleichem is created to function as an intermediary figure, one that stands between the author and the character-narrator. However, his function in the monologues and letters has been minimal, defined primarily as the vehicle through which the stones are made accessible to us.

In these Kasrilevke stories, however, Sholom Aleichem, narrator, is too close to the author to function as an intermediary figure. Instead of a narrator telling his story to Sholom Aleichem, it is Sholom Aleichem's story that we hear directly from him. When the narrative is governed by one voice instead of two, the authorial judgments are presented to the reader explicity instead of implicitly. Sholom Aleichem here serves as the narrating voice through which the author makes what was once implicit now explicit; his role is no longer minimal. When Sholom Aleichem, the author, introduces a narrator who reminds his audience that he is a writer, it is not merely an act of playful self-indulgence on his part, nor a stylistic technique. Rather, it provides an opening in the narrative for direct authorial intervention which previously was indirect, implied through the establishment of dramatic irony and distance.

For example, Sholom Aleichem, in one series of stories, returns to Kasrilevke, his home town, as satirist and author, in order to write a "Guide to Kasrilevke":

Of recent years all sorts of books about cities and lands and similar useful subjects have made their appearance in other languages. So I've said to myself, 'We imitate other peoples in everything: they print newspapers—so do we; they have Christmas trees—so have we; they celebrate New Year's—so do we. Now, they publish guide books to their important cities (they have "A Guide to St. Petersburg," "A Guide to Moscow," "A Guide to Berlin," "A Guide to Paris," and so on)—why shouldn't we get out "A Guide to Kasrilevke"?⁸

As the analysis of previous works has shown, Sholom Aleichem is generally defined by his profession, and it is the fact that he is a writer that has distinguished him from the monologists and has provided the justification for the acquisition of Menakhem-Mendl's letters. In the Kasrilevke stories Sholom Aleichem's profession is at once the source of comedy and the main aspect of his character that distinguishes him from the shtetl "folk" and binds him to the biographical author. When this change from two voices to one controlling voice occurs the reader is thus asked to accept the posture of that speaker in a different way. The author loses the distance he once had in relation to his subject because he no longer has an intermediary figure to bridge the gap between the two worlds. There is, in fact, no longer this physical separation because the shtetl Jew is becoming a part of that larger world. As Sholom Aleichem tells us in the passage cited above, the shtetl Jews imitate the rest of the world. When the shtetl attempts to copy the standards of the outside world, it loses its traditional values and practices.

His question, "Why shouldn't we get out 'A Guide to Kasrilevke'?" is, of course, rhetorical and serves to emphasize by contrast the disparity between the small shtetl and the big cities. Although Sholom Aleichem continues to be funny, more than anything else, the reader is presented with an overt indictment of the current trends and values which override the potential comic situation for the work. Instead of laughing at the limitations of the shtetl folk, Sholom Aleichem involves himself directly in the text as he proposes to comment on the changes that have occurred in the shtetls.

The Argument

The complex argument in the Kasrilevke stories is directed toward a diverse audience, and the effect is that of an author attempting to discover a suitable channel to direct the blame for an increasingly hopeless set of events, circumstances and attitudes.

Sholom Aleichem cannot maintain an adequate amount of distance from the material; his anger extends in many directions. The attitudes and capabilities of the shtetl folk are no longer a source of amusement for the writer. They are depicted as a source of bitter sorrow and embarrassment for the Jewish intellectual who has left the shtetl. The Kasrilevkites are depicted as always on the fringes of life, always missing. Their predicament is caused, in part, by their own internal restrictions, and also by the indifference, as well as overt hostility, on the part of the outside world. Sholom Aleichem describes the shtetl "folk" in hopeless terms: "This has ever been the fate of the little folk of Kasrilevke: when they dream of good things to eat—they haven't a spoon; when they have a spoon—they don't dream of good things to eat."⁹

When the shtetl Jews are required to assimilate into European culture they simply cannot adapt, and thus are shown to the outside world as an embarrassment to those Enlightenment intellectuals who advocated assimilation, or at least change. When Sholom Aleichem, for example, returns to his home town to compose the guide book to Kasrilevke he does so in order to measure the shtetl's progress. The voice of the author is sarcastic and judgmental:

In conceiving this project I have, of course, been swayed more by considerations of public service than by personal motives. My book will serve as a guide to strangers visiting Kasrilevke. It will tell them where to get off the train; what transportation to use; where to get a tasty meal or good glass of wine; or where to enjoy an amusing play and other such wholesome fun of which there is much in Kasrilevke. For Kasrilevke is no longer the town it used to be. The great progress of the world has made inroads into Kasrilevke and turned it topsy-turvy. It has become a different place.¹⁰

When Sholom Aleichem refers to the "wholesome fun of which there is much in Kasrilevke" we are drawn to the sarcastic voice of the author by the disparity between what we know of Kasrilevke, a poor ghetto, and the attempt to emulate the wealth and culture of the big cities. The author here can no longer show the shtetl as a place with its own rich culture and traditions. The changes, "inroads," that have occurred require the loss of the old world culture.

Sholom Aleichem's position concerning the "progress" made in the shtetl is clear. He satirizes the kinds of progress made in Kasrilevke by the common folk, and the changes which are characterized by imitation. When the shtetl attempts to imitate the advancements of the big cities it fails. Of its hotels, he writes: "Noiach the doorman showed me into a dark room, reeking of freshly tanned leather, decayed pickles, and stale cheap tobacco"; of restaurants: "The smells that assailed my nostrils as I mounted the stairs were not especially fragrant, but an empty stomach doesn't pick and choose."¹¹

The attempts of the Kasrilevkites to imitate progressiveness in the cities are thwarted by the inherent old world provincialism and limited resources that characterize the shtetl folk in general in Sholom Aleichem's earlier stories. Instead of advancing, the shtetl loses its own traditions and becomes merely a parody of European culture. For Sholom Aleichem, the loveable shtetl characters become a problem that he cannot resolve. The authorial voice is thus no longer objective and datached. His previous intention to reconcile a distanced audience to its heritage is impossible because the heritage of which he once spoke sympathetically no longer exists as he knew it.

The collection of vignettes in "Progress In Kasrilevke," for example, introduces the final phase in the upheaval within the small Eastern European shtetls. Sholom Aleichem returns to his home town (a recurring situation in these transitional stories), to discover drastic changes in the entire environment and lives of the shtetl Jews. He no longer recognizes the people who once inhabited Kasrilevke. Both external appearances and internal values have changed, and these Jews seem to have lost all those qualities which made them acceptable to an outside audience.

It's amazing what can happen to a village! You know, my old home town has undergone such changes I can't even recognize it any more. After being away for ages, I came back to Kasrilevke for a few weeks and wandered around its streets, spoke to the people, and looked for old friends. But how? Where? For whom? Most of them had gone the way of all flesh, a few, had gone to America, and the newly-rich waren't the ones I was looking for. It was a topsy-turvy world. Where did the famous little people with their little ideas disappear to? Where were all those know-it-all, bearded Jews who poked fun at everything? Where were those young people with canes who used to wander around the marketplace looking for business in vain, who out of depths of despair ribbed one another and then the whole world?

Now, I saw dandies strolling through the streets, staid people with homburgs and pince-nez. Of the once slovenly women with their white stockings and red garters, and of the girls with their colorful kerchiefs—not a trace remained. Ladies with chapeaus now walked past me. Matrons with parasols. Chic young ladies wearing gloves. New People. A new world. . . .

. . . That's the external picture, so to speak. But, under the surface Kasrilevke had changed even more. I just couldn't believe I was home. As I walked through the village, I looked for at least one of the old clubs. I remember there used to be clubs to the point of excess here. And I'm not talking about the Psalms and Mishna Clubs. I mean societies like the Free-Loan, the Free-Kitchen, the Visit-the-Sick, the Clothe-the-Poor, the Help-the-Needy, the Medical-Aid, the Relieve-the-Oppressed. It seemed that all these groups had gone the way of their founders. They passed on like most of the little people, like lonely old Rabbi Yozifl, may the fruits of Paradise be his. Thinking of him brought tears to my eyes.¹²

The narrator, Sholom Aleichem, continues to be the mouthpiece for the author. That is, there is no noticeable distance between his voice and the biographical author's, and the voice we hear is saddened and embittered by the changes that have taken place in Kasrilevke. Sholom Aleichem complains that the humor and sense of community have disappeared from the shtetl as a result of European influence. He describes the pre-Enlightenment shtetl, its limitations and infirmities, in relation to the changes it has made. These negative aspects of the pre-Enlightenment shtetl serve as a foil, and we would expect that the modern changes would strengthen the shtetl and make life easier for its inhabitants. What the reader expects, however, fails to materialize and the changes that occur prove to be even worse than the previously existing conditions. The reader perceives Sholom Aleichem's nostalgia as ironic; the narrator misses those poverty-stricken conditions that once held the shtetl community together. Instead he finds the community at odds with itself:

. . . there was a Yiddish Club and a Hebrew Society. One couldn't bear the sight of the other, or stand mention of the other's name. Then there was the Choral Society which had split into two. One group was now called "The Flute," the other, "The Trumpet." They were quite ready to eliminate each other. Then there were two progressive schools—aggressive, really—each with murder in its eye. . . .¹³

Sholom Aleichem contrasts these new groups to the organizations of old, such as "Clothe-the-Poor" and "Free-Loan." The "progress" that has infiltrated the shtetls manifests itself by the Kasrilevkites' imitation of all the negative facets of big city life and values, demonstrated above by the competition and lack of community which existed in the previous Kasrilevke stories.

Sholom Aleichem clearly loses the distance he once had as author. He further places his audience of Jewish intellectuals in a tenuous position because his attacks and disappointments are directed toward them as well as toward the inadequacies of the shtetl folk. The expectations of the Enlightenment intellectuals for the shtetl Jews are unreasonable and self-serving.

Sholom Aleichem's argument is structured in analogous terms, demonstrated by the previous example of the comparative changes that occurred in the shtetls. He now compares life in the shtetl to life in the outside world, and finds both lacking. Sholom Aleichem shows the shtetl to be a microcosm of the larger world. He describes Europe as a country riddled with problems, from the "Dreyfus affair" in particular to isolationism and anti-semitism in general. To paraphrase Sholom Aleichem; if the larger, more experienced, "enlightened" world cannot handle its own problems, then the Kasrilevkites certainly cannot. Within that overall structure lies another argument: if the Kasrilevkites can barely perform basic survival tasks, such as securing adequate food, maintaining comfortable living conditions, and resolving their own internal conflicts, then it is absurd to assume that the shtetl can become like modern Europe.

As we can see, Sholom Aleichem's anger becomes explicit because he fails to maintain an objective distance from his material; he cannot. He is, in fact, directly inside the shtetl in these stories and his stance thus changes. When Sholom Aleichem, the biographical author, breaks down the distance between himself and his spokesman, Sholom Aleichem, narrator-character, his perspective toward the subject inevitably changes. He expresses anger at the shtetl Jews, and at Jewish intellectuals. Sholom Aleichem, in fact, fails to resolve the dilemma that he discovers when the shtetls are exposed to the rest of the world. The narrative consequences reflect this new authorial stance and perhaps Sholom Aleichem's own sense that he has essentially complicated his audience's reaction to the fiction.

Narrative Structure

The major difference between the Kasrilevke stories and Sholom Aleichem's earlier works lies in the function of comedy. Humor, as I discussed earlier, served this writer as a means of escape from the essential tragedy of the situation he described. Humor made the material more acceptable for a removed reading audience. His Kasrilevke Jews, although hungry, maintained their sense of humor. When Sholom Aleichem was comically ironic the reader was allowed to view the characters from the author's distanced yet sympathetic stance. Humor for the author thus established the necessary distance from which he could respond to and regard his characters.

In these later Kasrilevke stories the function of comedy changes. Here the comic situations and characters reflect the author's despair. His voice is sarcastic rather than ironic. Irony implied more ambiguity; sarcasm is in many ways an assault, and cannot be regarded by the reader as ambiguous. Because the author is directly inside these stories as an embittered and indignant commentator, the comic elements appear intrusive and thus much less effective, less interesting, in fact. The comic structure in the story "Bandits," for example, reflects the writer's own sense that he no longer provides them with a stance of ironic distance.

In "Bandits" Sholom Aleichem is both protagonist and narrator-author. He enters his hotel room in Kasrilevke only to discover "three queer-looking men whom I had never seen before rummaging about with a candle. My bed was upset, my clothes-press was open, my suitcase lay in the middle of the room, and my papers and manuscripts were scattered helter-skelter on the floor."¹⁴ The robbers demand money from Sholom Aleichem and a bantering cross-examination ensues:

'Where are you from?'

'From Yehupetz.'

'What's your name?'

'Sholom Aleichem.'

Mistaking my name for the customary Yiddish greeting, they returned the compliment by saying, 'Aleichem Sholom,' adding, 'your name please.'

'Sholom Aleichem.'

'Aleichem Sholom.' We're asking you what they call you.'

'Sholom Aleichem—that's what they call me.'

'An odd name. What do you do?'

'I'm a writer.' (Pp. 99-100)

Clearly Rabinovitsh's choice of "Sholom Aleichem" as a pseudonym functions as a source of humor in itself, since it is the traditional formal greeting between Jews,¹⁵ and its comic nature and use cannot be denied. The audience in this case is no longer allowed an ironic vision of the events, but laughs because of the play on words and the virtually slap-stick humor of the situation. The dialogue continues along these same lines as the bandits attempt to understand Sholom Aleichem's profession:

'So what do you write? Petitions or documents or denunciations?'

'I write articles and story books for Jewish children.'

'In other words, you're a book vendor, an author.'

. . . 'Write where?'

'In the papers.'

'What papers?'

'Yiddish papers.'

'Are there Yiddish papers?'

'What do you suppose?'

'What do they do with them?'

'They print them.'

. . . 'What are they good for?'

'For reading.'

'Who reads them?'

'Jews.' . . . (Pp. 100-103)

The entire narrative is structured around this kind of comic bantering and while funny and essentially light-hearted it lacks the stylistic eloquence achieved through the dramatic irony of his earlier stories. This kind of humorous play on the language might well be effective for an immediate audience of Yiddish-speaking shtetl Jews, but for an extended audience of Jewish intellectuals, this narrative form falls into the early maskilic notion of the function of Yiddish as a literary medium, discussed earlier, that is, that Yiddish is used primarily to satirize itself by emphasizing its inferiority to other languages.

When Sholom Aleichem structures his story around these comic lines the narrative loses its dramatic movement and the design of the story is circular, lacking the tension he developed in the earlier works through the reader's ironic understanding of the texts. Instead of an ironic authorial tone, in fact, the comedy leads to a tone of indignation on the part of author. Sholom Aleichem laments the fact that he is forced to write in a language that is considered illegitimate, and to write for a limited audience. The humor here serves as a veil through which tragic implications are filtered. The closeness between the narrator and the author prevents any distance Sholom Aleichem might otherwise achieve. This kind of satire introduces an element of self-criticism into the work, resulting in Sholom Aleichem's sense that he too is by no means exempt from the blame he places on the European intellectuals.

I am not suggesting that this is the only case in which Sholom Aleichem ironizes his profession. On the contrary, writing in Yiddish, the frequent misunderstanding of his audience, and the poverty that a Yiddish writer experienced are common topics in his repertoire of short works. For example, in the monologue, "An eytse," a young man has been waiting three days to discuss an urgent matter with the writer, Sholom Aleichem. As soon as the writer takes a glimpse of the young man he assumes his visitor must be a potential writer himself.

I looked the odd creature over. A typical small-town intellectual—a writer. A pale young man with huge, black, sad eyes, the sort of eyes that plead with you to have pity on a lost lonely soul. I don't like such eyes. I'm afraid of them. They never laugh; they never smile. They're always looking inward, immersed in their own ego. I despise such eyes.¹⁶

The author in this example laughs at himself and asks his audience to do the same. In "Bandits," however, the author fails to distance himself sufficiently from his narrator in order to laugh at Sholom Aleichem, the writer, with his intended audience. Furthermore, Sholom Aleichem directs his anger at those who have placed the nineteenth century Yiddish fiction writer in such a position; his tone indicates self-pity. When, for example, Sholom Aleichem responds to the bandits' demands for money, he informs them: "Where do I get money? God has spared me from it." (P. 98) The irony that characterized his previous works turns to indignation, and the humor does not temper the overt criticism and hostility demonstrated in his tonal shift.

Although Sholom Aleichem concludes the dialogue on this note, he never entirely loses the eloquence of the previous works. Sholom Aleichem, given his ability to change his position at will, becomes like the rest of the shtetl folk. When the bandits leave his room the writer loses his calm demeanor and runs screaming into the streets:

"Help! Help! Help!" I let out the weirdest shrieks when the prowlers had left, and roused the entire house. There was wild scramble from every part of the hotel. Women jumped out of beds in their petticoats, and the menfolk—if you will pardon me—in just their drawers. They thought there was a fire. . . .

"Hush, hush, nobody's house is on fire," Noiach the doorman cried out. He turned to me. "I'd like to know why you're shrieking like a lunatic calf. Why are you bawling like in a madhouse? You're liable to wake up all the yactors!"

"Robbers, murderers! Bandits have just set upon me and robbed me!'"

On hearing the word "robbers," the entire crowd was horror-stricken and raised a wild rumpus, all talking at the same time. (Pp. 104-105)

Sholom Aleichem, the author, appears to try out various postures as he once again distances himself from his narrator, Sholom Aleichem, who becomes a persona, one of the shtetl folk. The narrator's once learned, removed position as visitor-writer gives way and he is totally enmeshed in the actions and misconceptions of the other characters.

Here the author regains complete control once again and the story is brought to an appropriate closure. We hear a different authorial tone from the anger displayed earlier. The disjointed and disoriented voice of the narrator-persona abruptly shifts to the stylistic eloquence that clearly suggests the earlier voice of Sholom Aleichem:

I stood alone in the midst of the mud, bewildered by the night and its terrors and alarms. A dank chill gripped my body and penetrated every limb. Here and there a faint light loomed in a window. Blue wreaths of smoke curled up out of a stray chimney. A bright streak appeared above the horizon. From a number of places rose the crowing of roosters, which were tuning up their throats and vocalizing in every imaginable pitch and style: 'Cock-a-doodle-doo!'

It was getting light now. (Pp. 109-110)

Sholom Aleichem returns at the end of the story to his distanced position of observer. He paints a picture of a frightened people, unable to cope with even the slightest conflict. It is when the author distances himself from the text that he is most effective. Sholom Aleichem, by his very nature, can stand between the biographical author and the subject, allowing him that distanced perspective, or step aside, as it were, and allow for direct authorial intrusion. However, Sholom Aleichem's role as persona in the later Kasrilevke stories is rare, and usually we find the author directly inside the texts and his judgment and indictment override the essential humor of his works.

When Sholom Aleichem explicitly addresses himself to life outside of the shtetl he is perhaps the most bitter. There is little trace of ironic humor in these stories, and the irony gives way to overt anger, unmasked.

Outside The Shtetl

When the dramatic situation in the later Kasrilevke stories moves from the confines of the shtetl to the outside world, Sholom Aleichem's anger is intensified because he is forced to view the shtetl Jews through the eyes of outsiders. He depicts the shtetl Jew's exposure to overt-anti-semitism in the large European cities. The hopelessness of the situation of the Jews in Europe is finally confronted by the author, and his stance is only barely disguised. Sholom Aleichem demonstrates no restraint of authorial voice as he describes the shtetl Jews in the outside world, and his angry attacks extend to intellectual Jews and non-Jews alike.

In "The Poor and the Rich" section within Inside Kasrilevke, the controlling authorial voice is bitterly satiric as Sholom Aleichem describes the anti-semitic responses toward the shtetl Jews as they are forced into the big cities in search of assistance. The attitudes of the non-Jews in the cities suggest the enormous gap between the two worlds and emphasize the impossibility of assimilation or acceptance. The stories in this collection are entirely satiric in nature and the anger displayed by the author increases as the reactions of the non-Jews to the homeless shtetl inhabitants are judged.

The dramatic situation in these stories arises from a disaster that struck Kasrilevke. The shtetl is virtually burned to the ground, leaving people homeless and hungry. A delegation of Kasrilevke Jews is sent to Yehupetz, "the great and beautiful Gentile City," to solicit contributions for the desperate Kasrilevkites.

The authorial tone as exemplified by the description of Yehupetz as the gentile city, cited above, is immediately satiric, and Sholom Aleichem's argument is for perhaps the first time didactic and moralistic:

Now you mustn't suppose that there is a dearth of Jews in this non-Jewish town. Quite the contrary. As is well known, Yehupetz has had Jews in its midst from the days of antiquity on; and, it should be added, it craves them about as much as a man craves a headache.

For no matter when you come to Yehupetz and no matter what newspaper of theirs you pick up, the first thing that strikes your eye is the word 'Jews.' Thus you will read that such and such a number of them have applied for admission to the university but were not taken in; such and such a number of them were caught in a nightly raid (aimed to ferret out non-resident Jews) and were taken in. The reverse has never been known to happen: that Jews seeking admission to the university should be accepted and those caught in a raid should be rejected. This is about as possible as it is for a famished man to mistake another man's mouth for his own and to cram food into it by error.¹⁷

Sholom Aleichem is no longer laughing at the Jewish situation in Europe and the narrative essentially becomes overridingly didactic and tragic. I doubt if either an audience of European intellectuals or an audience of shtetl Jews would find the above description funny. As a result of this drastic tonal shift from his earlier stories about the Kasrilevkite Jews, Sholom Aleichem complicates the rhetorical, literary, and aesthetic situation that controls his narrative. Consider the tone in the following excerpts: "They feel their best only when they are all together. The non-Jewish world is quite willing to please them and keeps on telling them: 'You like to be together, don't you—Well, stick together then,'"¹⁸ The writer's sarcastic tone is really an attack on the myths and attitudes of the Europeans: "It's a known fact that every Jew takes along on the road no fewer than two or three bundles, . . . Hence, when traveling, Jews don't look so much like travelers as like wanderers, emigrants going to some faraway country where you simply can't get either pillows or quilts or rags—not at any price."¹⁹

The final result of Sholom Aleichem's didactic and moralistic tone in these Kasrilevke stories is that he fails to find a resolution to a dynamic situation. There is, in fact, no viable solution to the problem of the world's acceptance of the shtetl Jew, and the Jew's ability to survive in such a hostile environment. The problem is far too deeply rooted for change. As a result the author is angry and bitterly sorrowful. His anger appears to be directed against Jews and non-Jews alike and the causes of the problem are like the various links in a chain. Sholom Aleichem is no longer comfortable with, nor amused by the shtetl Jews because of their inability to adapt to the changes that confront them. He is further bitter towards those Jewish intellectuals who unrealistically insist that the shtetl folk come out in the open and gracefully merge into European culture. These demands and the subsequent thwarted attempts to fulfill them only intensify anti-semitism because the difference between the shtetl Jews, gentiles and intellectual Jews are magnified when the shtetl Jews find themselves out of their protective—albeit ambiguous—environment. Sholom Aleichem loses control of the narrative because he really cannot find an appropriate target for the blame. Perhaps what he cannot come to terms with in these stories is that there is no one particular group to blame, and no definitive resolution to the problem. The situation itself, finally, seems to have been an inevitable culmination of the changes which occurred throughout history, and I think we find a writer struggling to find an acceptable stance toward an entirely hopeless situation.

Because the author lacks a suitable stance, he begins to weaken his hold on the reader. That is, his audience remains in an uncomfortable position throughout these stories. When, for example, in the story "In High Places," the shtetl Jews in the city finally find the only place that will accept them, Sholom Aleichem tells us that place is jail:

Unfortunately, however, none of the high-born were looking down, and our delegates, the most prominent citizens of Kasrilevke, headed by their rabbi, Reb Yozifl, were led away with great pomp to a place which is rent-free and where no racial and social distinctions exist—one place where Jews, even if they come from Kasrilevke, can stay as long as they live, if only the Lord will grant them length of life.²⁰

I think that the above citation speaks for itself. Sholom Aleichem attacks his European audience for their neglect of the shtetl Jews and thus fails to draw the reader inside the text. He is, instead, in a position where he stands on the side of his characters against the reader. Therefore, instead of persuading his audience to change their attitudes toward the old world shtetl and the shtetl folk, he alienates his audience even further from their heritage and from the dynamic situation that existed at the turn of the century.

This is by no means to imply that Sholom Aleichem's mastery as a fiction writer is lessened by the narrative structure and tone in these stories. I think, however, that this aspect of his fiction has been neglected, perhaps even denied. Sholom Aleichem is, of course, one of the great Jewish humorists. What gives his fiction such strength and stylistic merit, however, is his flexibility of form. Like a magician, he is able to conjure up voices to fit the changing ethos of his time. He limits himself to no one form. Sholom Aleichem constructs comic caricatures, sympathetic types, tragic figures in a humorous vein that shifts in degree and in visibility.

Clearly, the shtetl was never glamorized or made the object of sentimental attachment. In fact, Sholom Aleichem has portrayed the shtetl as isolated, destitute, and its inhabitants as often petty, illogical, constantly disoriented. However, the sincerity and genuine feelings displayed by the old world shtetl Jews are replaced in these later stories by artificial adaptation of values and appearances foreign to those same Jews. These transitional Kasrilevke stories were written in 1914-1915 when Sholom Aleichem himself had immigrated to New York and had optimistic hopes of a successful literary career and a supportive intellectual community.²¹ In these expectations he was severely disappointed and as a result, perhaps his bitter tone is much more apparent in these stories than ever before. The negative conclusion reached in the stories of the changing shtetl and the outcome of its inhabitants extends to the immigrants who have fled European persecution and even to the modernization of the shtetl itself. Hence, the tone of utter despair in the narration of the later Kasrilevke stories. If hope was suggested before, it is entirely abandoned here. The author is unable to come to terms with the hopeless situation he perceives so acutely.

The complete hopelessness of the situation for the shtetl Jews extends beyond the confines of the ghetto, into an Enlightened Europe, and the land of promise itself. Persecution and isolation, on a far greater level, await them in the outside world when they must abandon their values and adapt themselves to an unfamiliar and unaccepting environment. The problem for Sholom Aleichem, the writer, I think, is how to come to terms with the hopeless situation and not to despair, not to lose his aesthetic distance. He is unable to accomplish this in these Kasrilevke stories because his anger and disappointment made it impossible for him to maintain the level of detachment, sophistication and obvious artistic skill he demonstrates in so many of his other works. In most of Sholom Aleichem's works, when the author is not distanced from the text by another narrating voice the result is satiric, didactic and denunciatory.

Notes

¹ Sholom Aleichem, "The Town of the Little People," in Selected Stories of Sholom Aleichem, trans., Julius and Frances Butwin, Alfred Kazin, ed., (New York: Random House, 1956), p. 28.

² Sholom Aleichem, The Adventures of Menahem-Mendl, trans., Tamara Kahana (New York: Paragon Books, 1979), pp. 134-135.

³ Refer to footnote 22 in Chapter I.

⁴ Sholom Aleichem, "Dreyfus in Kasrilevka," in Collected Stories of Sholom Aleichem: The Old Country, trans., Julius and Frances Butwin (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1946), pp. 260-261.

⁵ Sholom Aleichem, "The Great Panic of the Little People," in Old Country Tales, trans., Curt Leviant, (New York: Paragon Books, 179), pp. 98-100.

⁶ Sholom Aleichem, "A Predestined Disaster," in Old Country Toles, pp. 149-160.

⁷ Sholom Aleichem, "The Great Panic of the Little People," in Old Country Tales, p. 100.

⁸ Sholom Aleichem, "A Guide to Kasrilevke, Author's Foreword," in Inside Kasrilevke, trans., Isidore Goldstick (New York: Schocken Books, Inc., 1948), p. 7.

⁹ Sholom Aleichem, "Reb Yozifl and the Contractor," in Inside Kasrilevke, p. 222.

¹⁰ Sholom Aleichem, "A Guide to Kasrilevke, Author's Foreword," in Inside Kasrilevke, pp. 7-8.

¹¹ Sholom Aleichem, excerpts from "A Guide to Kasrilevke," in Inside Kasrilevke, pp. 27-28 and p. 44.

¹² Sholom Aleichem, "Progress in Kasrilevke," in Stories and Satires, trans., Curt Leviant (New York: Sagamore Press, Inc., 1959), pp. 17-18.

¹³ Sholom Aleichem, "Progress in Kasrilevke," in Stories and Satires, p. 18.

¹⁴ Sholom Aleichem, "Bandits," in Inside Kasrilevke, p. 97. All further references to this story are from this edition and will be noted in the body of my study.

¹⁵ Dan Miron discusses the use of Sholom Aleichem as a comic element in the stories:

By choosing a formal greeting for a name, the author was first and foremost asserting the comic, prankish, and "contrary" nature of his persona. A being, whose very name consists in an incongruity or in a pun-like misuse of language, is bound to be "funny." Thus the name Sholem-Aleykhem, appearing under the title of a feuilleton or a story, conditions the reader's reading of the work and directs his expectations from it. . . . One suspects that most people who wrote on Yiddish literature became so familiar with the name Sholem-Aleykhem that they altogether lost the sense of its original absurdity. . . . In order to recharge its waning comic potential and refresh the reader's perception of its preposterousness, he employed various gimmicks, such as that of comic misunderstanding, the recurrent employment of such gimmicks should not be interpreted as a mere recourse to easy techniques of getting a laugh from an audience ready to laugh almost at anything, but rather as the author's persisting intention to protect the basic comic feature of his persona, . . . from fading.

(Miron, "Sholem Aleykhem: Person, Persona, Presence," in The Uriel Weinreich Memorial Lecture I, [New York: Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, 1972], pp. 32-34.)

¹⁶ Sholom Aleichem, "A Bit of Advice," in Some Laughter, Some Tears: Tales From the Old World and the New, trans., Curt Leviant (New York: Paragon Books, 1979), pp. 131-132.

¹⁷ Sholom Aleichem, "The Delegation," in "The Poor and the Rich" section of Inside Kasrilevke, pp. 115-116.

¹⁸ Sholom Aleichem, "Among Their Own," in Inside Kasrilevke, pp. 165-166.

¹⁹ Sholom Aleichem, "Among Their Own" in Inside Kasrilevke, p. 165.

²⁰ Sholom Aleichem, "In High Places," in Inside Kasrilevke, p. 193.

²¹ See Rabinovitsh's biography, My Father, Sholom Aleichem, by Marie Waife-Goldberg (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), "In America," Chapter XVII, pp. 278-317.